


what's left of me and our little vignette.

by anomalousity



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3670725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalousity/pseuds/anomalousity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t that he’s not coping; it’s just that sometimes he regresses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what's left of me and our little vignette.

It isn’t that he’s not coping; it’s just that sometimes he regresses.

Seventy years or so has built a shell that hides what he is, which, in essence, is a twenty-seven year old guy still confused by circumstance. Natalia being here helps a lot. She’s the only person who’d understood the humanity that the shell sometimes exuded, rather, how he could manipulate it. Tony and Bruce are good too; Tony understands the needs for barriers and Bruce understands what it feels like to lose control in order to protect himself.

It’s Steve, really, that makes everything feel so awful.

One minute, Bucky will be laughing, cheerful and blissed out with a warm hand wrapped in his own, the press of a muscular shoulder against his own, soft blond curls brushing his cheek when Steve leans over to whisper something or other. It’s a lot like it was back _then_ , even if the muscles and the height advantage are a little different.

One minute, Bucky’s all good, systems operational, a-okay, and the next he’s got a short-blade popping out of his wrist as he pins any of his friends to the nearest surface with mutters of ‘missions’ on his lips.

Steve wasn’t his only mission; he was the key component, but not the only objective. Natalia was pretty high priority for divulging trade secrets to an enemy organization, and Bruce was crucial for intelligence. Thor wasn’t on Hydra’s list until he and the rest of the Avengers saved the world from the Chitauri. Bucky remembers going to London in 2013 to find the demigod dancing with a young woman Bucky would later know as Darcy Lewis to music blaring from a piece of shit rust-bucket of a car. He’d failed his mission, but he knows that’s for the best.

Everyone knew Tony was a target with arrows pointing towards the space between his eyes; a man as powerful as him supplying impossible technologies to an enemy organization cannot be dissuaded, especially after previous capture.

He looks at his friends and sees the targets on their backs, on their faces, on their minds, on the components that makes their bodies, and wants to tear them down. He wants to reach deep inside himself and rip the person that is ‘Bucky’ from his body and tear him to shreds, until nothing but good aim and fierce determination are all that are left.

Steve, who makes everything feel so awful, also makes everything so much better.

He can feel his heartbeat against his back right now, unfaltering and steady, just like Steve himself. His arms are warm, where one is tucked under his head, and the other is snug around his waist. If Bucky concentrates, and he always is, he can feel the soft flex and relaxation of Steve’s abdominals as he breathes, warm puffs of air against the back of his neck.

It’s an incredibly vulnerable position to be in, Bucky thinks.

If he’d turned around, he could kiss Steve awake. He could even turn him on, if he felt so inclined, and fuck him. If he’d wanted to, he could tell Steve he loves him again and again, and it would never be a lie. He could sit back and just stare at him, the light freckles over the bridge of his nose, the hard line of his jaw. He could look for traces of Steve before he took the serum in the face that still belongs to him, but is so different.

Instead, he turns around and wakes Steve up by pressing cold metal fingers under his shirt.

Steve’s eyes flash open quickly, followed by a sharp hiss and a muttered, “fuck,” before he’s calming down and relaxing into the bed, fingers snagging in Bucky’s hair.

“’morning, Buck,” he says, same as he always says.

“Good morning, Stevie,” Bucky replies, scripted reply.

Steve leans forward to press a sloppy kiss to the side of his mouth and grins at Bucky for approximately fifteen seconds, like always, before heading off to the bathroom. Bucky, as per usual, waits in bed. He looks at the new arm Tony built him, at the scar tissue Bruce’s knowledge in biology helped fix, at the beautiful chrome finish that reflects almost every object in shining technicolor, spurred by Nat’s new interest in optical physics.

He remembers what the beautiful fingers look like wrapped around Steve’s throat, and flinches away from himself, despite knowing he’ll never be able to escape.

It must be minutes, but it feels like seconds. Steve comes out of the bathroom and takes a look at him before pulling him into his arms. Vaguely, Bucky hears himself telling Steve that he’s so confused, God, he’s so confused in Russian, and vaguely, he hears Natalia translating for him from where she stands at the door.

“It’s okay, Buck, it’s okay,” Steve’s saying, and Bucky tries to get his fingers to stop squeezing, tries to forget that if he presses the juncture below the joint of his thumb he can pop a blade from his palm, tries to pull his arm from Steve’s back, and tries not to flinch when he hears the soft squeak Steve releases when the tip presses centimeters from his spinal cord. Bucky’s thankful for that, at the very least; he can control the shell if he tries not to control all of it.

“моя любовь,” Bucky spits, tugging his wrist away and hating the tears that leak out of the corners of his eyes. He runs his fingers over the damp spot at the back of Steve’s shirt, hesitantly pushes at it until he feels the wet skin still knitting itself together.

Steve’s arms are tight around him, his chin tucked over Bucky’s head. He’s drawing patterns over Bucky’s lower back with his fingers and humming something that sounds suspiciously like a lullaby. He buries his face in Steve’s shoulder and doesn’t care that Nat is probably still there or that Jarvis can see all this and, Bucky assumes, so can Tony and Pepper.

He calms down after a while. Steve’s wound closed relatively quickly, and his shirt is sticky with drying blood. Bucky’s breathing in hiccups, apparently having sobbed for the better part of a half hour without realizing. Nat’s shut the door and Jarvis informs him that Steve had requested that the surveillance for this room to be observed by Jarvis only.

Steve redirects him back to the bed when Bucky starts squirming in his arms, and lays down beside him, soft fingers tangled with Bucky’s.

“’m sorry,” he says once he finds his voice.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Steve replies, squeezing his fingers.

Bucky shakes his head and tugs his hand free. “There _is_ ,” he insists, reaching up to push Steve’s shoulders and pulling away at the last second. “I can’t- God, Steve, I can’t look at you without thinking about killing you nineteen ways.”

Steve opens his mouth to reply, but Bucky presses his palm against his lips. “It’s not okay,” he says. “And you have to recognize that.”

He waits a while to make sure that Steve isn’t going to protest or insist that Bucky’s just perfect the way he is before lifting his palm.

When he does, Steve’s staring at him like he wants to say things that would make Bucky want to bury himself in the sand, or kiss Steve into the next century.

“It’ll always be okay, Buck,” Steve says, reaching up to shift Bucky fully onto his lap. He shifts a little and leans back against their headboard. “How couldn’t it be?”

“How _could_ it be?”

“Well, you’re here, with me,” Steve murmurs. His hands are soft over Bucky’s waist when they settle. “We’ve made it into a time where it’s acceptable for us to be us, and the world’s gotten a little bit better.” He wrinkles his nose. “We still have time to help try and fix things.”

“But how many of those things need fixing because of me?”

“That wasn’t you, that was Hydra.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I was aware of what I was doing, Steve. I did what I needed to stay alive.”

Steve nods in acknowledgement but doesn’t say anything. His thumbs are rubbing warm circles over Bucky’s hipbones, his fingers splayed out over the top of Bucky’s ass. It’s surprisingly comforting, and Bucky leans back into the touch.

After a while, Steve’s hands slide up to his shoulders, and before Bucky knows it, he’s being tugged down against Steve’s chest.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hmm,” Bucky hums.

“You know I’m glad you’re here, right?”

Bucky hesitates a moment before nodding against his shoulder.

“… and you know I love you, right?”

Bucky doesn’t nod, but he murmurs ‘yes’ against Steve’s neck.

“And so does everyone in this tower. You’re not the only person here who’s done bad things while not yourself.” Steve scratches the back his head with his fingernails. “And it was Hydra’s fault, not yours.”

Bucky grumbles and makes to pull away.

“But you’re better.”

He leans back and stares at Steve, bemused. “Better?” he asks, because he doesn’t feel any better.

Steve just shrugs. “You haven’t had an attack in two months,” he says. He makes a sweeping movement over Bucky’s upper body. “You’ve put on weight, and you can lift your human arm again. You shave frequently, shower even more, and sleep at least three hours a night before waking up and looking up history you’ve missed, or cleaning, or whatever it is you do at night.”

“But-”

“But nothing,” Steve interrupts. “You respond to Bucky, not just James or Mstislav or Sasha. You smile and joke and smoke, oh don’t give me that look, the apartment didn’t smell like stale cigarettes because of me, jerk.” Steve giggles before continuing. “You like how you look, even if you stopped slicking your hair back and got your nose pierced and wear those _goddamn_ jeans. You like modern science, not just because you were conditioned to but because you’ve always loved science. You’re you, just… different.”

“Different,” Bucky echoes.

“It’s not a bad different, Buck.”

“But it’s different,” he says. He fiddles a little with the hem of Steve’s shirt and avoids his eyes. He never really thought about the positive side about getting his mind back. Yeah, he’s different than he used to be, but is that a bad thing? The anxiety and dissociative tendencies certainly aren’t good, but he’s gotten parts of himself back. And this century is better for people like Bucky, with changing ideologies and sexuality and gender identity and all sorts of other things that hadn’t even existed back in the day.

He glances up at Steve and traces a line from cheek to chin before leaning forward and dropping a light kiss to his lips. “Maybe you’re right,” he murmurs against his mouth, relishing in the feel of him for a moment more before pulling away.

**Author's Note:**

> Yell at me on [tumblr](http://frouvaire.tumblr.com)


End file.
